Live For Me: Doctor Who One Shot
by truenarnian
Summary: 11th Doctor/OC written for a friend. Enjoy!


_"Where is the Doctor?"_ the Lenti general snarled, some of his purple spit flying into my face. If my hands weren't cuffed to my chair, I would reach up and wipe it from my eye with as much contempt as I could muster. I put all that contempt (and it was quite a lot) into my glare, pressing my lips together so firmly they must have turned white. I couldn't give up the Doctor: he had to stop the Lenti from leaving Ilchalloy, the planet of the day. He was disabling their warships right now—but the general doesn't know that.

The general gestured to one of his lieutenants, who detached himself from his post leaning against the wall and quickly strode to my chair.

"You're in charge now," the general snarled, his second row of bottom teeth receding into his jaw. "Make her talk."

I would pity the lieutenant if he weren't commissioned to torture me. "How?" he asked. "She hasn't spoken at all since we caught her." Yeah, let them think they caught me—I deliberately let them catch up to me as the Doctor and I ran for their spaceships. The Doctor needed time to make sure they didn't leave Ilchalloy, so I bought him some. I'll never forget the look he had on his face when I yelled at him to run: horrified and incredibly reluctant to run away. He only continued running because I shouted at him to do so. "She's been nothing short of frigid with us, General."

"Well, if she enjoys frigidity, then let there be ice," the general snarled, his forked tail curling slightly at the tips. He shot me a malicious glance and turned to leave, barking, "All of you! Out! That means you, Kipriol!"

The lieutenant's oblong head swiveled around to the general. "Just refastening her restraints, General Lunkitan, sir!" he yelled, bending down to the wrist cuff on my left hand.

General Lunkitan looked mildly impressed. "Good thinking," he said. "She won't jerk around as much."

"I believe it's called 'shivering'_, _sir," Kipriol corrected.

Whatever good impression Kipriol had made on Lunkitan was now lost. "Just get out here quickly! It won't do for one of our own to freeze along with a prisoner!"

"Yes, sir!" Kipriol had now moved onto my right wrist cuff.

No, no, this won't do. I _can't _freeze. "Kipriol?" I asked, keeping my voice low. "That's your name, isn't it? Listen, do whatever you want to torture me, but _please_ don't let me freeze. I'm a Monotain, and what might be a brisk day to you would be like getting frozen into an iceberg for me."

"You can't fool me," Kipriol said, though his voice shook a little. "The Monotains are extinct. They've been dead for nearly a millennium."

"You think I don't know that?" I replied in a softer tone. "My family are the last of the Monotains. I saw my entire species die because our sun had, after eons and eons of time, finally burned out. The only reason my family is alive is because the Doctor had come and saved us as our planet froze."

"Why did he save you?" Kipriol asked.

I shrugged. "He landed in our backyard. He dropped all of us off on another planet, and I didn't see him again until a few years later. Strange, it was like he didn't recognize me. But I had a point." I leaned forward. "I've been traveling with the Doctor for ages now. I'm sure you've heard of him. The Oncoming Storm, the Predator, the Prisoner of the Pandorica, sound familiar? If you're innocent, completely free of any villainy, he is the sweetest, kindest man you will ever meet. But if you seek to gain power or wreak havoc through the universe, then may he have mercy on you. He can wreck your plan, your life, your _world _without getting a spot of dirt on his bowtie. And that's why you have to let me go."

"What?!" Kipriol exclaimed, startled.

"He's lived a long life, Kip," I began to explain. "He's gotten protective of his friends. So if you hurt me on purpose- even if it's just a tiny little bruise- he will utterly destroy you."

Kipriol looked uneasily around and straightened up. "The room's temperature will decrease until you wish to divulge information," he said, incredibly unsure of the course of action his platoon was taking. "The price of warmth is information of value." He demonstrated an about-turn and walked out of the room, the metal door slamming behind him. I looked up at the cameras, one in each corner near the ceiling and all trained on me.

"You'll regret this, Kip," I said, looking directly into the lens.

The metal panels on the wall began gradually turning frosty blue as the temperature in the room lowered. For humans, 10 degrees Celsius was a bit chilly; it was light-jacket weather. For Monotains, 10 degrees Celsius was 10 degrees Farenheit. In other words: very, _very _cold.

The cold air sliced my lungs open as I breathed in, my teeth beginning to chatter. _Don't you dare give the Doctor up,_ I chanted to myself. It was becoming harder and harder to remain resolute in the face of imminent frostbite. My arms started shaking with cold as the temperature was turned down even more.

_"Where is the Doctor?"_ Lunkitan's voice rang out tinnily from a loudspeaker.

"You'll never find him!" I shouted as my extremities began numbing up.

_"Actually, Elizabeth," _an achingly-familiar voice declared over the speaker, _"they don't have to."_

_"Doctor!"_ Lunkitan snarled.

_"Just give me a moment, Lizzie dear,"_ the Doctor said. _"You'll be warmer faster than you can say TARDIS."_

_"I don't think so, Doctor!"_ Lunkitan retorted, before the speaker went offline. I prayed that the sound would come back on so I'd have something to listen to as I froze. I hoped I would hear the Doctor's voice one last time before I…

A minute later, the metal door scraped open, and the Doctor and Kipriol were dashing inside. "Elizabeth!" the Doctor exclaimed, spotting my frozen, lifeless form. He bolted to my chair and took my face into his hands, looking me over for signs of life. "Come on, Lizzie," he pleaded. "Survive for me, okay? We've got the temp increasing in here for you. Please, Elizabeth, live for me."

"D-D-Doctor," I whispered through a numb jaw. Satisfied that I was at least conscious and sentient, he smiled, lightly slapped my cheek in some form of 'hello', and set his sonic screwdriver to work on my left wrist cuff, Kipriol's quadruple-jointed phalanges (four on each hand) scrambling over my right one.

"Had a change of heart, Kipriol?" I said, fighting my lungs' unwillingness to expand so I could talk.

"Good ol' Kip right here opened the door for me!" the Doctor exclaimed, slapping Kipriol on the back. Kipriol smiled uneasily. "He's not so bad. Apparently, whatever you said convinced him to stand up to the general." My left wrist cuff popped open. "Good job, Lizzie."

A few seconds later, the left cuff opened, and soon the Doctor and Kip were helping me out of the chair, since I wasn't yet in command of my numb limbs. Kip supported me as the Doctor shed his jacket, threw it over my shoulders, and gently but hurriedly guided my arms through the sleeves. I wrapped my arms around myself, reveling in the jacket's warmth: it smelled like Jammie Dodgers and concrete dust and _him._ He slung my arm across his shoulders, smiled encouragingly at me, and said, "Now let's get you back to the TARDIS. Kip, care to go on vacation?"

"Is now really the time to discuss this?" Kipriol replied as we struggled out of the torture chamber, my numb feet slowing us up. As we ran through the corridors of the Lenti prison, I began warming up and regained the ability to properly use my legs. I ran with Kip and the Doctor, taking my arms from their shoulders when we reached a flat-out sprint. We could hear the Lenti guards pursuing us, their footsteps echoing off the walls.

"Don't you dare escape, Doctor!" the familiar voice of General Lunkitan snarled just as we turned a corner and caught sight of the TARDIS. There she stood, in all her royal-blue glory, while the Doctor, Kip, and I bolted for her. Suddenly, I felt the muscles of my right leg paralyze and I fell to the ground, unable to continue running.

"Elizabeth!" the Doctor cried, grabbing Kipriol's arm and yanking him to a stop. I chanced a look behind me: I wish I hadn't. There stood General Lunkitan, a malicious expression on his face and a sleek, streamlined photon gun in his hands, pointed at my leg. His face changed when he realized he'd paralyzed the person wearing the Doctor's jacket, not the Doctor himself. Baring his teeth, he adjusted his aim to the Doctor, who already had the screwdriver out. He pointed it at one of the large metal panels in the ceiling and buzzed it for a few seconds; the panel swung down and formed a barrier in the hallway between the guards and us, the jailbreakers.

"That's the first time I've ever seen you use the screwdriver to unscrew something," I quipped.

The Doctor swiftly bent down, gathered me into his arms, and picked me up, hustling me to the TARDIS. "I let them get you once," he said under his breath. "I won't let them do it again." Kip ran ahead of us and held the TARDIS door open as the Doctor hurtled inside and set me down on the ground, bolting to the console.

"I-It's…it's bigger…" Kip was stuttering, "…on the inside. How?"

"Lizzie, explain to him!" the Doctor called, twisting knobs and throwing levers. The TARDIS began making its beautiful _vwoorp_ while I explained exactly what the TARDIS was to Kip, who was slowly but surely helping me up. Once we were safely in orbit somewhere, the Doctor scooped me into his arms and carried me to the stairs.

"Don't you ever give yourself up like that again," the Doctor said seriously, trying to sonic my leg back to life. When I opened my mouth to retort, he continued, "Don't lie to me, I know you let them catch you." He leaned closer to me and said, "Don't you _ever _do that again."

"You needed time, so I got you some," I retorted.

"But you are worth so much more than—"

"What? All the people Lunkitan would've enslaved?" I said, my voice rising. "My life is not worth more than any other—" I was cut off by the Doctor's lips on mine.

One of his hands slid up to the back of my head and the other snaked under my arm and around my back, holding me close. My hands found themselves holding the Doctor's face, reveling in the kiss. The Doctor's weight caused me to lean backward, with the edge of the stair behind me cutting into my back, but the pain hardly mattered. All too soon, it seemed to me, the Doctor pulled away, gazing into my eyes and holding himself up above me by supporting himself on the steps.

"Your life is worth more than anything to me," the Doctor said vehemently, "so don't _ever _gamble with it or say it's worth just as much as anybody else's." He regained his balance and went back to freeing my leg from paralysis in silence. When my leg had completely regained feeling, he glanced up one last time at me and said in that heartbreakingly-apologetic way of his, "If I was too forward, I'm sorry."

"No!" I nearly yelped. "No, not at all." I gently cupped his face and pulled him in for another kiss, less intense this time: a simple peck on the lips. "Just shocked, is all."

The Doctor smiled so brightly it was like his face couldn't contain it. He wrapped his arms around me and picked me up from the stairs, swinging me around the console like a little girl. He set me down next to it and gazed at me lovingly, as if I were made of the stars. "My lovely Lizzie," he called me. Clapping his hands over my arms, he called, "Right then! Kip, sorry about the PDA. How about a vacation on Medinar-89 to make up for it? And why don't you go too, Lizzie?" He began twiddling dials and winding cranks, and soon we had materialized on the shores of Medinar-89, a lovely planet with blue beaches, gelatinous green seas, and paddleboats as the mode of transport. The Doctor escorted Kip and I to the TARDIS doors, his arm loosely wound around my waist. As Kip exited, I turned to the Doctor and asked, "Why are you sending us away?"

The Doctor thought a moment, but decided ultimately that I could handle the knowledge. "The first time I met you was the second time you met me. I think the first time _you_ met _me_ was an older, future version of myself coming to save you from the extinction of the Monotains. The first time _I_ met _you_ was when I found you and your family, stranded on a planet you weren't from as the last survivors of a dead species."

"So you haven't saved my family yet?"

He smiled. "That's what I'm doing now," he said, guiding me out the door. "Well, I would, but I can't have you inside the TARDIS when I go—two of the same person would cause a paradox that the old girl couldn't sustain."

I leaned in to kiss the Doctor one more time. "Don't take too long," I said. "I'm not sure how Kip will handle Medinar-89." I stepped away from the TARDIS, smiling brightly at the Doctor. I chanced a quick look behind me at Kip, who was slowly traipsing down one of the blue beaches. I turned back to the Doctor just in time for him to send me a wink. Laughing, I playfully blew him a kiss, which he received with a good-natured smirk, disappearing into his beloved TARDIS to rescue me in my past.

When he came back an hour later, I fairly flew into his arms.

"Sorry I'm late, love," he whispered into my hair. "You know the TARDIS, her navigation's wacky. Where's Kip?"

"He wanted to stay," I murmured back. "He's fallen in love with Medinar-89 already."

He gestured to the TARDIS. "Shall we go see the stars?"

I grinned. "Oh, please."

When I was nearly frozen to death in the Lenti torture chamber and the Doctor asked me to live for him, he honestly didn't have to. I already do.


End file.
